Here you'll find the rantings of a blogging fool and sometimes writer. My more personal posts, including progress reports on my various writing projects, are Friends Only. General posts on writing are Public. Please see my user profile for my other LJs and my friending policy, and browse through the sidebar for nifty goodies and useful info.

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Writing only leads to more writing. (Colette)

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Visitors from 1/30/05:

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After I shut down the computer last night, I pulled out the hardcopy of the WIR and all the notes (the printouts of the beta readers' comments and my scribbled notes on a half dozen scraps of paper) and wrote out on one sheet the main points/questions I need to address. It's neat and organized and I feel more in control. I think I'll work beginning to end again. That's mostly how my brain works. But at least now I feel like I've done something, reviserly.

A nice post about revision on Will Write for Chocolate that shows (or is it "tells"?) the wide variety of processes among writers.

Not the kind outside, and yes, it's been pretty much pouring rain here in the northeast (technically, NYS is a mid-Atlantic state) for 8 straight days. feh.

But the indoor kind. I tend to do a lot of creative thinking in the shower and tonight, my backbrain stepped over my forebrain, without so much as an "excuse me," and told me why the 6 scenes I've preserved of Not-Access Denied have been bothering me. Basically, I was holding on to 3 scenes too many. I needed to cut it after the first 3 scenes and move on from there. And then, because I was a bit stunned and not sure how I could move forward, it told me. Now I have to redo one of the newly cut scenes and I can use the opening of it, plus I have to rework another character.

I still have little idea where this is all going yet, but I'm liking these first steps a whole lot more.

Backbrains. Ya gotta love 'em.

Talked to Deb, my collaborator tonight, about the Mars books. Actual decision-making will be in January, as planned, but after comparing notes on how much we loved Serenity, we talked about the general plotting of our series and what needs to be done with the WIR. Which led to us discussing revising vs writing, and which was harder.

I've read here and there that some writers find writing harder, all that empty white space needing to be filled in. I'm the opposite. I don't know how much I'll be writing. I don't have an outline of dozens and dozens of scenes to write. I just work scene by scene and all I can see is the scene I'm drafting while ideas for what comes next starts bubbling in my backbrain.

But revising the finished draft? Wow. I've got 110,000 words there. That's intimidating. All those words and scenes and chapters I need to work with. It's almost more than I can comprehend. Which is part of why I like revising as I go. Some of that is necessity. I need to reread drafter scenes to get back into writing mode and to remember what's already written. I write in layers mostly, so I need to add in action and description, which means I get to fix things that jump out as being wrong. And I get to catch plot glitches and holes before they get too big for me to fix without dumping half the ms.

Granted, I dropped half the ms twice for the WIR, but that was a failure of character, not plot, and even while revising, I couldn't identify the problem, not for months after letting the thing sit so my backbrain could work on the problem, spurred on by discussions with Deb.

In general, the sooner I find problems and fix them, the better. Moving forward gets easier and the amount of revision needed once the draft is done is usually less, much less than trying to fix everything all at once, then dealing with the consequences of each fix in turn. For me, it just works better for me to be satisfied with what I've written in order to be able to move forward. Writing is almost like knocking down dominoes for me; one scene leads to the next leads to the next leads to... well, you get the idea.

BTW, we both loved Serenity and had almost the same exact reactions to moments in the film. Except, I think I ended up teary-eyed and she was calm and centered.

Meanwhile, the Isles won their home opener. Go, Isles!

I posted this comment on dendrophilous and liked it enough to want to save it here with a tag and in memories. So, here it is, my revising style. Ooooo, such chills and thrills.

I revise as I go because I write as I go. Since I have a faulty memory, I need to reread what I've written previously. If not too much time has passed, I just reread the last few drafted scenes. These vary in quality. Some are fairly detailed and need little fixes of the proofing variety or I'll catch a glitch. Other scenes are fairly skeletal and I'll fill them in, usually descriptions, action. I've done drafts that are almost pure dialogue with speech tags so I won't forget who said what.

If more time has passed, I'll go back farther. Sometimes, I'll reread whole chapters or even the whole ms to where I left off and catch a lot. I really can't move forward til I've assimilated and am happy with what I've written. Fortunately, I haven't fallen into the need to make it perfect trap.

Sometimes, though, when I reread the most recently draft scenes, I'll hate them and toss them outright and start over.